On Wednesday, the winners of the first CrossMedia session, held by Wallimage, were announced in Namur within the framework of the FiFF, during a captivating colloquium around media crossovers.

Skilled speakers, a deep reflection about the interaction between new media and film (by Domenico LaPorta), a presentation of work by fifteen service providers which excel in today’s and tomorrow’s technologies: the kind of colloquium, when held in Paris, which would have only been accessible to a few lucky people able to pay the price. However, this is Belgium and in Namur everyone who responded to the (free) invitation now took several months of advance on their absent colleagues.

Some people even left with a nice sum of money in order to achieve particularly interesting CrossMedia initiatives. These grants, initiated by Wallimage, were open to digital promotion projects for films the Walloon fund co-produced.

Each producer who had already been selected by Wallimage was allowed to submit an application, which was reviewed by a group consisting of six people : Philippe Reynaert, director of Wallimage, Stéphanie Hugé, in charge of Wallimage-Coproductions, Virginie Nouvelle, responsible for Wallimage-Entreprises, Pierre Colle (expert with the Walloon Telecommunications Agency), Philippe Deville (Executive Committee Advisor for the ICT sector at S.R.I.W.) and Philippe Pierquin (in charge of virtual communication at Wallimage, the Belgian Film Magrittes and editor-in-chief of Cinevox).

The jury’s conclusions were then transmitted to Wallimage’s Board of Directors who selected the winners.

The first, very original, round for Wallimage was a real success: 25 films were allowed to submit, and twelve effectively did, almost 50% of potential candidates in other words! Not bad at all for a call for projects. Also, note that is the very first time that Wallimage actually offers a grant (subside). The only condition was to spend the money in the Walloon Region, in regional companies. A logical demand, as the goal of the fund has always been to add a dynamic to the Walloon audiovisual companies’ activity. The operation forms a part of the Creative Wallonia strategy, set up by Jean-Claude Marcourt, Minister for Economy, SMEs, Foreign Trade, New Technologies and Higher Education.

Out of the twelve submitted files, six were selected after a long afternoon of heated debates. The CrossMedia projects awarded a grant for the promotion of their films are:

Approved for Adoption, produced by Artemis. The service providers who created the projects are Dogstudio (Namur) and Fishing Cactus (Mons).